The present invention fundamentally improves a refrigerator described in Ref. 1, which uses one compressor, one condenser, and separate thermally insulated freezer and fresh food compartments, each with its own evaporator. As described in Ref. 1, two evaporators are in series, and each is equipped with a fan, which, if not energized, greatly reduces heat transfer to its associated evaporator. Thus, the evaporators may be individually "activated" by energizing one fan and turning off the other. The method disclosed in Ref. 1 advantageously uses a transient effect that occurs in any vapor compression refrigerator in which the refrigerant charge, the bulk of which is in the condenser at high pressure while the compressor is running, is allowed to flow into the low pressure evaporator while the compressor is stopped. The result of such migration of refrigerant is warming of the evaporator, and when the compressor restarts, there is a transient time interval, typically two or three minutes, when the evaporator and the refrigerant it contains are too warm to efficiently cool the cold space. According to Ref. 1, the evaporator of the fresh food evaporator is activated and that of the freezer de-activated during the transient time interval. Since the fresh food compartment is typically about 35F warmer than the freezer, it can be cooled efficiently during the transient time interval.